Best Practices for Code Contribution

Collaboration is the key for a successful software development. It works best when code can be understood and contributed to by many.

We will discuss and see the factors that makes a code contribution successful and we all rely on and offer some strategies for encouraging contributions on our own projects.

Before we start understanding some of the best practices, let’s see the types of Open-source Users.

• Collaborator
• Consumer
• Maintainer

No matter which project or language you pick the below mentioned practices can be applied. I would suggest analyzing which roles suits you the best then start selecting the project depending on your interest and language of preference.

1. Look for the README.md document

I’m sure any of the well-maintained Open source should contain this document, with proper guidelines indicating ways to contribute. It also helps new team members to see how the code is structured. All these paves way to clean coding, with fewer bugs — meaning lesser time spent in maintenance.

2. There are other ways you can contribute without writing a single line of code.

Replying and handling open issues. We get a lot of issues every day, and some of them may lack necessary information. You can help by guiding people through the process of filling out the issue template, asking for clarifying information, or pointing them to existing issues that match their description of the problem.

Reviewing pull requests for the docs.

Help people write test plans.

3. Questioning

Ask as many questions as possible before raising or submission of issue or ticket and refer documents or review the open issues if required.

4. Review

Review the issue/code and make sure all the necessary information is updated for further analysis.

Make sure you have added the relevant commit message and performed required test.

5. Feedback

Do not consider Feedback as a personal comment, give time for your contributions to be reviewed and use this as a learning experience.

If you feel to contribute by sharing your views or comment about the best practices in code contribution, then feel free to add your comment below.